Widgets in wordpress are great ways to add easy and simple new design features to a website in the sidebar. The default widgets that you are probably familiar with, before you get more creative with plugins, are for post categories, tag clouds, navigation, search, etc. In WordPress, the “widget area” is already pre-defined in the code allowing users to place the widgets into the areas by dragging and dropping them, usually in the sidebar area, header and footer areas.
To find out where the widgets are go to the back end of your wordpress site down to Appearance>Widgets, here is an example of your typical WordPress widget panel.
As said earlier, plug-ins are great to attend extended features like slideshows, social media icons, contact forms & more. When a new plug-in is added to the site more times than none a widget is created and you can drag the widget over to the widget area for your site!