The only thing I was arguing against is the completely false claim that "almost all" Android widgets "silly" "attention grabbing" "obtrusive" etc. That is not even remotely true unless I am just the luckiest widget picker in the world. Maybe you are going off the widgets that HTC and Samsung ship with their skins. Yes, those widgets are garrish but it's just like how the TV's in the showroom will be cranked up to maximum brightness and saturation. It looks good in the store next to the other guy (I suppose). The widgets I have downloaded off the market including AK Notepad, Aldiko, Apollo, BTMono, Connectbot, Drive, Dropbox, Elixir, Engadget, Evernote, Flashlight, Google Play Music, gReader, Google Voice, Juice Defender and on and on, none of them have the behavior and appearance you are decrying.
As far as your question of why Android apps look like crap sometimes I would imagine that devs have an easier time making money in the iOS app store so they make a larger effort polishing the apps that they put in there. Some apps are exactly the same between Android and iOS like Pulse. Some apps have a better iOS counterpart like the Engadget app. And of course, some very similar apps have better Android versions like gReader vs. Feedler.
I have devices that run iOS, Android and Windows Phone and for many reasons, I use my Android devices 90 percent of the time and the 10 percent of the time I use the other stuff it has nothing to do with the quality of the apps.