tepelstreel

The Featured Category Widget is mainly designed because there were people for whom the Featured Post Widget was not enough. They wanted to put a category of their blog in the highlight. 
If there is a post thumbnail, it will be displayed above the headline of the post. If there is no thumbnail, the first picture of the post is taken. You can set the size for the thumbnail or just take the standard from your options. Decide yourself, whether you want to show the excerpt, saved with your post or just the first three sentences or the first twenty words of the post. Style the widget individually, ready.
The Featured Category was tested up to WP 4.5. It should work with versions down to 2.9 but was never tested on those.

Featured Category Widget

The Featured Category Widget is basically a Featured Post Widget for a category.

Yet another recent post widget. It shows the last post of your blog, where and how you want. You can define, on which pages of your site it shows and whether you want to show a post thumbnail or not. Decide, whether the links go to the post, to the attachment page or simply to a file. You can style the links in the plugins settings and each widget container differently.
The plugin was tested up to WP 4.5 and should work with versions down to 2.7 but was never tested on those.

A5 Recent Post Widget

With the A5 Recent Post Widget you can put your latest post in the focus and style it differently.

Featured Category Widget vs A5 Recent Post Widget