Hi Ryan,

I'm not so sure if ServiceNow performed updates that it would be directly to the pages. The pages only act as containers. The real update would be to the widgets.

You have to remember that when you place a widget onto a page it not actually the widget that gets rendered but the widget instance that points to the actual widget.

Edit:

One other thing that isn't apparent is that widget instances have an Active flag on them. You can see this by either looking at a list view and pulling that field in or doing a righ-click view xml while viewing a widget instance record. So one way of preserving the oob page is simply setting the Active flag to false and then pulling your custom widget on that page. You'll just have to remember that if you need to see the oob widget work you'll need to go back to the widget instance record and flip the Active flag back on.