Hi Rita,
Firstly, sorry for the delay - I wasn't online yesterday.
So let's get into it!
1. You might also want to remove the 'Save' button from it - you can do this by simply commenting out the line in HTML with element <button>, or the whole footer div
2. Important remark is, that we will not be able to embed the widget at exactly the same place as the original variables were. It's because the whole form is being generated dynamically from the script. What we can do, is to place it at the very beginning, or very end - before the buttons.
So if we want to put it in the beginning, open your cloned form widget in editor and in HTML go somewhere about line 62, where you see <!-- form -->
right before it place these lines:

        <!-- Embedded variables -->

          <sp-widget widget="data.embedVariables"></sp-widget>

If you want the variables after the form, place the lines right before the <!-- UI Action Links -->

3. Go to server script part and somewhere where the data objects are assigned, place this line

        data.embedVariables = $sp.getWidget('your_cloned_variables_widget');

And this should work. Again, if you're using this page for more than just sc_req_item, you need to embed a condition so your variables are called only for the tables that can have variables. It could look like this:
HTML:

<!-- Embedded variables -->

          <div ng-if="data.hasVariables">

              <sp-widget widget="data.embedVariables"></sp-widget>

          </div>

Server Script: (almost at the end - maybe right before the line // Activity formatter is hardcoded to set specific options)

if (data.table == 'sc_req_item') {

  data.hasVariables = true;

        }

Hope this helps!