Sidebar Customizing: Widgets or not?

I’d like to customize my sidebar to my quite specific (but not that unsual) tastes and keep running into things that I cannot customize via settings.

One example would be sorting my link categories by something other than name, or sorting the links within them by rating; which I found I could change using wp_list_categories.

But as I’m pretty new to WordPress, I’m a bit torn and maybe I’m missing something: If customize my sidebar.php, don’t I lose the ability to use widgets? (And I like being able to drag and drop the search and archive/calendar widgets, for instance.) Can I make a “semi-widgetized” sidebar with some hardwired stuff at the top and bottom and a widgetized section in the middle? Should I copy and edit the blogroll widget and use a PHP-executing text widget for custom sections?

Is there a “correct solution”? Any help would be appreciated.