Yup, pretty much, Medard is an example of app with graphical image on the cover, for the news pic, plenty of apps display live updates. You'd probably have to patch homescreen to prevent it being placed 'randomly' (very likely such patch that stops 'sliding' is already existing), sadly don't think you can increase size that much, but there was patch forcing bigger covers (2x2) so this could also be useful. Sadly patching that much is a bit of an inconvenience and probably not how an app 'should' work/behave, but maybe some way on the tablet you could patch half of of the screen for such widgets and leave the rest for multitasking (you also get interaction possibility, like dismiss this news item by swiping left, go next by swiping right etc so with no time limitation as on WP would make it even better)