Widget image slider

I’m having a heck of a time doing what should be simple. I would like to have a plugin that will allow me to put a simple slideshow in multiple widgets.

I would like to upload the images, set a URL to hyperlink to, and drop it into a widget (sidebar or footer), and have it simply display the image and fade through to the next with them linked to the URL.

I have tried
– Nextgen, but the loader image just keeps loading
– (a)slideshow
– WP Image slider
and a few others.

I’ve even taken the ad approach to see if there was something that can create multiple groups of images to link to that I can drop into posts, pages, or widgets.

Any recommendations?