mgiulio

This is an improvement of the default Recent Posts widget to select posts by a category.
For more informations and news please visit the official <a href="http://mgiulio.info/projects/mg-recent-posts/" rel="nofollow ugc">project page</a>.

mg Recent Posts

A widget to display recent posts by category.

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.

mg Recent Posts vs HTML Plus Recent Posts by Category Widget