Render a view exposed filter in a region without exposing it as a block
That's interesting, there may be a possibility...

This would work if you 1) have the View object, or 2) if you can figure out which view to load via the url path or something...

You would put this code in a preprocess function for your region, or perhaps a template although that wouldn't be recommended.  However you insert it into your region, the following code will generate the exposed filter form markup:

$view = views_get_view('view_name');
$form_state = array(
            'view' =&gt; $view,
            'display' =&gt; $view-&gt;display_handler-&gt;display,
            'exposed_form_plugin' =&gt; $view-&gt;display_handler-&gt;get_plugin('exposed_form'),
            'method' =&gt; 'get',
            'rerender' =&gt; TRUE,
            'no_redirect' =&gt; TRUE,
            'always_process' =&gt; TRUE, // This is important for handle the form status.
          );
          $form = drupal_build_form('views_exposed_form', $form_state);

          $exposed_filter_markup = drupal_render($form);