Can I swap out a "Recent posts" widget for an arbitrary one?

please try and ask for support from the theme vendor; help with commercial themes is difficult, as there is no free access to the template codes.

I have, but unfortunately, didn’t receive any reply. I was hoping someone on this forum might be able to tell me what I’d need to do, with vague instructions, even if it can’t be precise or exact.

you would need to start with using the https://pastebin.com/ to paste the code of (just a guess) following template files of your theme:

– index.php
– sidebar.php (or all sidebar-??.php files)
– functions.php

these might either have the corresponding code, or might be pointing to further template files needed.

index.php
sidebar.php
functions.php
home.php

Thanks.

the code for the homepage ‘latest news’ is in home.php, from line 59 to 92; it is hardcoded, i.e. no widgets.

if you want to use widgets in this area, you need to edit home.php and functions.php:
https://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/

Yay, got it all sorted. Thanks for the help!