POC - Combining BW Clock and Desktop Launcher to spend less time "Loading..."

(1) having it work together with code that imports other modules (e.g. clock_info in this case)

Yes... Modules like that will end up staying in RAM. BUT they will only be loaded once, so they're not going to end up using more and more RAM each time. If the module is designed well it shouldn't actually use up too many vars (less than 20) so I wouldn't worry too much about those.

There seems to be some state left with regard to the widgets which causes them not to be rendered after switching back and forth with them visible

This really only makes sense if the widgets are kept visible on both cases. If you have to remove them then every widget would have to support unloading too - and also reloading them will add to the time required to change apps, so it's less of a win.

Otherwise the widgets should still be fine I think...