Panels
 

ive made a small frame and ive put 6 little panels on it.

Im trying to create something like a mini hotbar for the addon im developing.

what i can't figure out is how to put some text or an image in the panels.
Something to make it look like a button.

Can anyone help me out with this?

Take a look at the ActionButtonTemplate.xml file from the default UI code.

You have 3 options:

1) inherit from that template directly
2) inherit that template into your own template which makes any purpose specific changes you need to the template
3) copy the template code and chop it up to suit your purposes.