External templates and “el” with Knockout and Requ

I am trying to use Knockout ViewModels as self-contained "widgets" that can be placed into any (or multiple) DOM nodes on the page. I had an approach in Backbone that seemed to work well and I'm trying to convert the concept to Knockout.

In Backbone view I would do something like this, using the RequireJS text plugin to pull the template and inject it into the el:

define(['text!templates/myTemplate.html',], function(templateHTML){
    var view = Backbone.View.extend({

        initialize:function() {
            // yes I know the underscore templating stuff doesn't apply in Knockout
            this.template = _.template( templateHTML );
            this.render();
        },

        render:function( ) {
            // the $el is provided by external code. See next snippet
            this.$el.append(this.template(myData));
            return this;
        }

        // other view behavior here

    });

    return view;
});

And then some other piece of external code could place that view into an existing DOM node:

new MyBackboneView({el: $('#myExistingDivID')});

In Knockout, the closest I can find to this approach is to have the external code use the Text plugin to pull the template, inject it into the div, and then apply the KO bindings:

var mydiv = $('#myExistingDivID');
mydiv.html(myTemplateHTML);
ko.applyBindings(new MyKOViewModel(), mydiv[0]);

1 - Is there a recommended way in Knockout to have the ViewModel itself inject the external template HTML based on the equivalent of Backbone's "el" concept? The key is that the external (router-ish) code controls where the content will be placed, but the ViewModel controls the actual details of the content and where to get the template.

2 - If yes, should I take this approach, or am I abusing the way that Knockout and MVVM are intended to be used?

You can override the default template source and then use that with the default render engine like

var stringTemplateEngine = new ko.nativeTemplateEngine();
stringTemplateEngine.makeTemplateSource = function (template) {
    return new StringTemplateSource(template);
};
ko.setTemplateEngine(stringTemplateEngine);

Quick example I did

http://jsfiddle.net/3CQGT/