It get's the exposure any other widget gets. I don't want email on my front screen, the indicator icon is more than enough for me. I'm not sure how the ui is going to work actually. On my N85 I don't use the standby screen for much. Why? It's bloody slow to do something. Say the standby icons, click up 3 or 4 times to get to them, then click over 2, 3 times. I can fire off any application in the app menu with 3 key strokes on the numeric key pad.
The converse problem is pages on pages of crap, kinda like my mother in laws iphone. Ok they aren't widgets but after 5 page changes I'm kinda bored.
Widsets did a fine job imho of having a bunch of widgets. You have variable size and side scrolling for more. It seemed like Nokia's first experiment with widgets, and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw things change over time.
I look forward to my N97. I hope they have good and frequent firmware updates.