Special Recent Posts PRO is a very powerful plugin/widget for WordPress which displays your recent posts with thumbnails.
It's the perfect solution for online magazines or simple blogs and it comes with more than 60+ customization options available.
You can dynamically re-size thumbnails to any desired dimension, drag multiple widget instances and configure each one with its specific settings.
You can also use auto-generated PHP code/shortcodes to insert the widget in any part of your theme.