In AngularJS, create lots of directives or use ng-controller?
AngularJS encourages slim controllers. They'd rather you have fat directives and services than controllers.

I think you are absolutely correct to have many directives.

In my angular apps, I have some directives without link to make my templates clean and readable. You can compress trees of HTML into their high-level meaning. Plus, if things get more complex later on, you can add a link function and add functionality with relative ease, and you don't have to change code in multiple places. As a Rails developer, I believe in DRY (don't repeat yourself). The fewer places the same code is, the easier it is to maintain.

So, directive or ng-controller?

If you are going to reuse a "widget" in multiple places, directives are ideal!

If it's a one-off or the main feature of the page, you're probably better off making it a ng-controller.