Measurements of quarkonia production in ultra-peripheral heavy-ion collisions are of important value to study photon-photon and photon-nucleus interactions, the partonic structure of nuclei, and mechanisms of vector-meson production. LHCb has studied both coherent $J/\psi$ and $\psi(2S)$ mesons in ultra-peripheral collisions using PbPb data at forward rapidity with the highest precision currently accessible. In addition, measurements of $Z$ production in $p$Pb collisions provide new constraints on the partonic structure of nucleons bound inside nuclei. Here will present these measurements of quarkonia and $Z$ production, along with comparisons with the latest theoretical models.