I'm designing a Unity script that I intend to be highly reusable and as easy as possible to setup within the editor. To this end, a number of properties of this script really need some kind of visual representation on screen.

It is an unresolved question to me whether the design of the script should require references to placeholder game objects, OR just Vector3's and float's that have associated gizmos drawn for them.

Normally a gizmo would be a natural choice, except that Unity gizmos are not directly manipulable (as far as I can tell). Because of this shortcoming I'm having to consider whether depending on references to placeholder game objects is a more designer-friendly approach ultimately, in spite of the extra setup required, and that it might be counter-intuitive when the placeholder game objects disappear at run-time (which my script would do).

Is there a community standard or preference here in this case? Can a Unity-experienced game programmer / designer speak to which approach they feel is more intuitive or more convenient to setup, when using a 3rd party script? Or is this just splitting hairs as long as I ship an example prefab with my script?