List of recent news/events from blog

@MichaelSL,

Is there an easy way to achieve this with Grav?

Sure. See how a blog is build in skeleton Blog Site. The blog/news collection does not need to be shown by the Blog page itself. The collection defined in blog.md, can be accessed from any Twig template and sliced and looped through.

{% set news = page.find('/news').collection() %}

{% if news|length > 0 %}
  <ul>
    {% for item in news %}
      {# display blog items #}
    {% endfor %}
  </ul>
{% endif %}

And is it possible to do it just in Markdown (such that it can be easily positioned in relation to other entries on a page) [..]

Markdown isn't created to 'position' entries. It is very simple tool to create content.
Twig snippets van be embedded into Markdown. However, I wouldn't embed Twig inside Markdown. Markdown is created to edit content. Twig is being created to design page layout.

There is also is possibility of using so called 'shortcodes' with which Markdown can be 'enriched'. Not sure if the is a shortcode plugin that allows the listing of a collection though.

[..] or would I have to create a special HTML template for it?

I think that would be the best option. And templates can easily be reused and included in Twig or Markdown.