GD Clever Widgets
Widget to select and show featured post
Featured Posts is a very simple widget that allows you to select one post to display in the sidebar. The widget has an interface that allows you to search for a post to display (it can be post, page or custom post type post).
Once you select the post to display, you can configure how it will look like.
This includes selecting template and style to use, and option to configure the length of the excerpt. The plugin allows you to override templates in your theme and adjust the rendering to your liking.