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Sometimes it may be useful to just hide a plasma widget instead of deleting. The main advantage would be that a user don't lose all configuration if she realizes that the widget was useful in the end, so recover it afterwards is just a piece of cake from the user point of view.

Perhaps it would be even better to offer "restore" instead of "hide" (I don't know how that should work exacelty, but with restore I think your intention ia also covered). With "restore", the settings would be remembered and would come back if the widget is reused.

If the widget use a data factory (is this the name?) the settings won't be losed.

You might try to have an empty panel that auto-hides for widgets that you aren't sure about, you can always add a 2nd instance of a widget on which ever panel you prefer [visible]

uninstalling & re-installing a widget only irritates a few electrons, some do have configuration files that don't get deleted on un-install
don't be afraid to try stuff by building & destroying panels
it's fun
educational