Solved! Go to Solution.
Rudie,
To get the description in a popup/dialog window you will have to use my eLayerList widget and not the default esri layerList widget.
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=58d9bb5693c94918a3934781d7234d18
As far as positioning widgets at a specific location you can set the left, right, top, and bottom attributes of any widget as covered in the docs. Look for "Attributes for widget position" in the link below:
http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/flex-viewer/concepts/01m3/01m30000001w000000.htm