Ctools content types- What do I need to do to get my content to render in the right place?
From the top of my head you should simply be able to do:

$pane = new stdClass();
$pane-&gt;title = 'Check this out!'; // Optional
$pane-&gt;content = '&lt;div&gt;My content&lt;/div&gt;';
return $pane;


It's also worthwhile to review What are Ctools plugin (content type, access, etc), and how does one create them? which contains an example content type.

The question
Correct way to render a modules output through a template? shows an example of rendering through a template, so you can strip the markup out from your pane and have it contain only the relevant content.