Are you creating a custom widget or just using the default ones?
If the latter, you can try out the Widgets Reloaded plugin:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets-reloaded
Thanks for your advice. I’ll definitely bear the reload widget in mind for the future.
Unfortunately, it is a custom widget that I’d like to duplicate. The Picasa Widget in this case (one instance showing albums, one instance showing an individual album)
Thanks again