Commerce kickstart 2 creating custom front page
I suppose you could create a custom block at admin/structure/block/add.
It comes with body field and after creating the block you can assign it to "content" region and set it to show up only on .

You have the possibility to create new regions in theme.info file and render them only in page--front.tpl.php.

I think these are the clean ways to do it, and don't require much coding.