HI furiouscrumb,
Hmm, the 3d widget should be on by default. You can press Q to toggle the 3D widget. Or click the widget button. You can define three types of widget. Move. Rotate. Scale. With holding Shift and clicking at the buttons you can select more than one widget type.
When you use transform with the WER keys, and not with the gizmo, then hold down Shift to have a finer control. And holding down Ctrl gives you a way to increase or to decrease in steps.
And one more. When you use transform with the WER keys, and just want to go into one direciton, then press W for move for example, then X to transform into the X axis. Then the transform just happens in X direction.
I hope this helps 
Kind regards
Reiner