I think we should be able to have the rich text editor without the accompanying controls (like make bold, copy, etc).
There should be methods on the HTMLEditor class for making the selected text bold, hyperlink, copy, etc like what exists now for the class TextInputControl. Than you could create whatever controls you'd like, and place them wherever you want, and call the methods on the HTMLEditor to perform the mentioned actions.

Also shouldn't HTMLEditor be a subclass of TextInputControl?