Am using All in One Adsense and YPN, I think most of those plugins are good to ease our job on ads placement. Just remember when you're using any of the plugins, check if there's a revenue sharing option, most of them have it, so you might want to turn it off, unless you want to donate the plugin's author
oh for the sidebar, try Quick Adsense plugin. it has shortcode feature, so you can place ads anywhere in your blog by using the short code
Good point, this plugin does take revenue share by default which seems a bit sneaky to me. But it doesn't say what % it takes! Unless of course you specify it yourself.
I use All In One Adsense Plugin.Its better than any other plugins used for sidebar and for within posts of your website