Widgets are legacy and their continued use shouldn't be encouraged. Breaking while enhancing existing ones, creating new ones, etc shouldn't be a focus of any WP release this year. It would save people grief.

Widgets are more problematic than shortcodes but unlike shortcodes they're also theme and widget area dependent with no official way to change that behavior. The whole "inactive widgets" situation just needs to go away.

The Widgets code could be removed from core, along with the Widgets screen and the customizer enhancements now that Gutenberg is going the blocks route. To leave it in is just legacy bloat since they've already decided widgets and shortcodes are legacy. Talk about your mixed messages. LOL.