FWIW, after last reboot the battery status in my status area said "no data or battery not calibrated". The same issue as reported in the post that I linked. Might your problem be a different face of the same thing? There it was blamed on KP52, here you blame it on the widget. But it looks like it's the status-area-applet-battery_1.0-5_armel.deb update that caused it.

In any case, mine fixed itself after a full discharge and recharge.