Startpage with teasers

Hi,

I have a fairly general question but I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction. I need to create a front page/startpage where the client can pick say four pages AND posts manually, and display as teasers with excerpt, image and title. They need to be able to actually do it on the startpage (ie not set a post to a certain category to display it on the startpage.

They need to be able to create more versions of the startpage, that is, pages on the site with the same structure, so I guess a custom post type is the way to go here. But can I widgetize an area for a custom post type? And what plugins are there where you can manually pick pages and posts to display as teasers? I have not found any, but this is a very common feature on most other cms I have seen.

All help much appreciated!