Both Uses

laboratory
in
My Mother, Literature ... Two Halves
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As strange as I felt, as strange as I was, my life's ambition was to be a lab technician.†
Chpt 2

lab = a workplace where people do scientific or medical research, or produce drugs or chemicals (also used figuratively) OR (as an adjective) related to such a place
By the time I was sixteen I'd decided that the rapid accumulation of as much wealth as possible was far more important than laboratory science, so I chose the law as my life's work.†
Chpt 2 *

Definitions:

(1) (laboratory)
a workplace where people do scientific or medical research, or produce drugs or chemicals

or (as an adjective): related to such a place
(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Much more rarely, lab can be used as an abbreviated way of saying Labrador retriever. It is also a rare last name and may indicate someone's initials.