home-pageluma-thememagento-2.1magento2widget
In the sample data with the Luma theme the home page is implemented with a Widget ("Home Page" Widget of type "CMS Static Block") plus block ("Home Page Block" containing the page content area html).
Particularly for a learning example, why not simply use a Page? It seems you can put the content into the Page, and assign the page to the CMS Home Page > Main Content Area. Would that not achieve the same effect?
(Related question with diagram: How does Luma theme home page work?)
in admin panel go to Content->Pages and edit home page and if you created your static block from admin panel add following to the Content tab
{{block class="Magento\Cms\Block\Block" block_id="your_block_identifier"}}
and if you created a custom block using a module add following to home page content tab
{{block class="Vendor\ModuleName\Block\BlockName" template="Vendor_ModuleName::yourcustomblock.phtml"}}
then save the changes and flush magento cache and deploy/delete static contents now refresh home page .
If this was not worked let me know
while you using this code
{{widget type="Magento\Reports\Block\Product\Widget\Viewed" page_size="5" template="widget/viewed/content/viewed_grid.phtml"}}
or insert widget in static block with code you should in Cache Management page disable FPC then reload home page (ctrl + f5).
Best Answer
That's the goal of sample data: show samples / examples of what can be achieved in Magento. The widget is there to show how widgets work.
Yes you can get the same effect by copy/paste the content of the CMS block in the CMS page content and remove the widget.
It becomes useful to use such widgets when you have several different blocks in your page and they have different purposes. E.g one widget for site presentation and one widget for current sale. You can disable the current sale block when the sale is over and thus you don't have to delete/comment content from the page