Passive perception: Roll are automatic for every scene, room, door, or area. You may detect traps, notice points of interest, and discover most things. You will not know the details nor will it automatically pass all checks. However, the highest passive perception will rule for anyone nearby.
If you have Perception proficiency that counts in the passive perception score. So you do not need to explicitly inspect every scene. 

Active Perception: You will roll vs. DC to learn more details about features of interest. For example, passive perception might allow you to notice “something off” about the floor, active Perception (or Investigation among others) will give you more details per the score. 

- You may only roll once per feature for everyone, so use the one with the best Wisdom or Intelligence score every time. 
- Investigation includes features you will get with an active Perception check and may have slightly different clues, though the difference isn’t usually significant. So use the one with the highest score. -
- Arcana check will tell you more about magic things than Investigation or Active Perception. 
- History check may be more useful for murals or other historic features.
- Nature for living or dead things
- Religion for religious things 
- Insight for animated things such as living creature behavior or active mechanisms. Tinkering proficiency may stacked with Insight for mechanisms such as traps if you have it. Animal Handling may be stacked with insight for living creatures. 

Remember, you may roll one thing per feature, so make it count. It is possible that one thing will not tell a complete story, or the same story as another, still use the one you are most proficient in as appropriate. For example, Nature vs. Insight with Animal handling will tell a slightly different story, but the result will be similar.