I eventually managed to recreate the OP's service-free solution. Here's the secret for the record: Any time you update the remote views, you must update everything that you ever update. My app was updating some visual elements, but not setting the button handler again. This caused the handler to stop working--not straight away--only after a rotation change, hence the confusion.
If this is done right, you don't need to intercept configuration change broadcasts, the last remote views you set will be used again after rotation. No call is needed to your AppWidgetProvider.
