You're missing the point. If you have an Android device, just press and hold the "home" button and you'll get an icon for every app that's been opened since your last reboot.
Take that same concept and instead show bigger screenshots for those apps (maybe just the last 5 or so) and let the user scroll thru them. Not too hard to switch to that app with a touch or remove it from the list or actually terminate it with a "toss".
No icons or widgets were harmed during this emulation.
They're still on your regular screens.