Panels too limiting compared to Dashboard

It seems as though the Panels module is not able to nest itself in a column of a new panel like the Dashboard module could?

In other words, making a 2 column panel and then embedding that panel into one of the columns in a 3 column panel to make a 4 column page. The Dashboard module could do this which made it very flexible.

How can the Panels module be considered a "complete replacement" for Dashboard? I tried using the custom content in Panels as a workaround but it doesn't really work. I hope I'm missing something here.

Please add these features to Panels or bring back Dashboard for Drupal 5.0.