I need to place a couple of plugins that only display in widget areas at the top of the home page (they don't have any short codes to display them in content areas). I was thinking of widgetising the two bars and then only displaying them on the home page.
How would I do that?

I would use css to hide the widget areas on all pages. Then I would use display:block for the widget area to show it only on the homepage.

Thanks. So much easier than what I was thinking I'd have to write.