linux4me2

This widget allows you to insert arbitrary Text and/or HTML code (optional) to precede a list of recent posts by category. It makes it easy to add introductory comments and to achieve interesting effects like wrapping your posts list around an image. It’s designed to be lightweight and easy on resources.
<blockquote>
Note: Widget Blocks, added in WordPress 5.8, make this plugin no longer necessary. The same results can be obtained by using a Widget Group, Heading Block, Custom HTML Block, and the Latest Posts Block. The latter also allows the use of multiple categories, which is not available with this plugin. Unless something major happens to change things, I won’t be developing the plugin beyond the current version (2.0.0).
</blockquote>

HTML Plus Recent Posts by Category Widget

Like the Legacy Recent Posts widget, but adds the ability to select the category and add text or HTML before the list of posts.

tweetysha

TW Recent Posts Widget is advanced version of the WordPress Recent Posts widget allowing increased customization to display recent posts from category you define.
Output will depend on your settings, and you may define to set post title, post date, featured image and post excerpt.
If you set to display featured image, than you will be able to define image width and height in px.
If you set to display excerpt, than you will be able to define how many characters to print and also you may add custom <code>read more</code> text.

TW Recent Posts Widget

A simple and flexible widget for WordPress which will show recent posts from selected category allowing increased customization to display recent post …

HTML Plus Recent Posts by Category Widget vs TW Recent Posts Widget