twodayslate

Widget to display your site’s most recent categories.
Current options:
<ul>
<li>Max number of categories to display</li>
<li>Title</li>
<li>Display date</li>
<li>Icon (if set by <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-category-icons/" rel="ugc">Simple Cateogry Icon</a>)</li>
<li>Display post count</li>
</ul>
GitHub: https://github.com/twodayslate/Recent-Categories-Widget

Recent Categories

Show your site's most recently used categories!

javierjara

This plugin adds a simple widget that you can customize easily it allows you to display a number of recent blog posts from a specific category. You have the options to choose a title, category, number of posts and whether or not to show the post date or to show the image featured (Post Thumbnails).The posts will be ordered by date just like the default Recent Posts widget included with WordPress. 
check the category you want to show.

Custom Recent Posts Widget Plus

Nice widget it is like the default Recent Posts widget except you can choose a category and in addition show the thumbnails.

Recent Categories vs Custom Recent Posts Widget Plus