update text widget content through api

I have several hundred wordpress sites and I wrote a script to ftp to each sever and execute some php code. I need to update a wordpress text widget that lives within a sidebar. The text widget contains HTML code that I need to update from time to time. Rather than updating through the admin panel I would rather write a script that uses that wordpress widget API. Is there a way to do that? Can someone point me in the right direction with it? Thanks