Render View or Block not Working in Drupal 7
I hope views will never use hypens. May be you typed wrong.

Views always use underscores.

&lt;?php $view = views_embed_view('carousel', 'carousel-block_1'); print $view; ?&gt;


I think it should be 

&lt;?php $view = views_embed_view('carousel', 'carousel_block_1'); print $view; ?&gt;


As per your template.php

&lt;?php $view = views_embed_view('downloads', 'downloads_product_downloads'); print $view;     var_dump($view); ?&gt;