The type of image included in the recent posts widget is called a thumbnail. By default, WordPress generates thumbnails as a perfect square, 150 x 150 pixels. Your source images are not perfect squares. The one I inspected was 700×400, so after resizing the image, some cropping still has to occur before the image is displayed.
Go to Settings > Media and uncheck the box in the thumbnail size section titled ‘Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions (normally thumbnails are proportional)’.
That will end up with some blank space above and below the image, so the image will appear smaller, but the whole thing will be displayed.
If you know for a fact that all your featured images for posts are the exact same dimensions, you can adjust the thumbnail size to a suitable ratio of your image dimensions. However, if there’s any chance there’s some variation in size, best to leave it at the default 150×150.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by
neanderstaal. Reason: typo