Yes, simply annotate a method with
@UiChild. In your case though, you'd have to have one method per "tag name":
@UiChild(tagname="column_1")
void addWidthToFirstColumn(Widget w) { addWidgetToColumn(w, 0); }
@UiChild(tagname="column_2")
void addWidthToSecondColumn(Widget w) { addWidgetToColumn(w, 1); }
and so on.