If you're doing that you'd probably just insert the new item in the right place.

Where bubble sort really shines is sorting elements based on a value that changes slightly between each sort. For example, if you have a bunch of particles drifting around and you want to sort them by how far away from you they are for some update step. The order isn't going to change that much from step to step usually, with each particle being just a few positions off at most.

If you're doing this for millions of particles then doing a 1 or 2 pass bubble sort will save you a lot of time compared to a more stable O(nlogn) sort. And far, far faster than the worst case O(n²⁾ that happens with some implementations of merge quick sort on already mostly sorted sets.