If you want to show one or more widgets in specific places and also keep the widgets editable in the WP admin, I think it is better to create as many additional sidebars as needed, and display them in the desired position of the page using the function dynamic_sidebar. When you register a sidebar you may customize the markup.
There’s also the function the_widget, which displays a specific widget, but in that case you have to pass the title and text as parameters, so there’s no real advantage over the classic text widget.