Hi Steve,
I have been working on more advanced control over the display of the plugin for a while, but have been holding off until WP 3.9 arrived (to give me an opportunity to see how widgets would work in the Customizer).
Thank you for explaining your use case, it really helps to understand where users are coming from.
I think there are various options for how I could give you control over this. Would having them hidden by default and only visible on hover be fine, or would it be better to be able to remove them completely?
Thank you for the support and for letting me know about your experience with the plugin so that I can improve it, it is appreciated.