Beamer: Automatic image container

Question

I know that I can use minipages and/or the columns environment to structure beamer slides in a way that allows to place images next to text/lists. I found this to be very bulky though and especially if one wants to insert an image afterwards, it can be quite a bit of work to adjust everything properly.

Thus I was wondering if there exists a package that would allow me to do something like this:

\begin{frame}
    This is some text on my frame
\begin{image}[<alignment>]
    \includegraphics{}
\end{image}

\end{frame}

In the scenario I have in mind, I could specify <alignment> to e.g. top, bottom, left, right to place the image at the top (above the text), the bottom (below the text), to the left (left of the text) or to the right (right of the text). This would also take care of putting the text itself into a box preventing it from overflowing my image.

I could imagine that something like this could be useful in a more generic version as well, that isn't tied to images. In this case I'd have environments as a container that would allow me to place their contents to the respective positions, resizing/repositioning the normal text accordingly.

From what I wrote here, I think that one could get this kind of layout done with something like a GridLayout that could be realized with a tabular environment. The key part here is the automatic placement though. Thus I do not want to explicitly write the cells a certain block spans, as this might need to be adapted once another block is added to the scenario...

Packages I have had a look at:

• flowframe: From its implementation it seems as if my vision could be implemented in a similar way. However this one concentrates on letting text flow from one frame to another which is not what I want...
• grid: Although the name sounds promising this package solely deals with vertically aligning text paragraphs in a two-column environment
• gridset: Seems to aim to do the same thing as grid.
• wrapfig: Seems to be quite perfect for this kind of job but apparently it doesn't work well with beamer (see wrapfig in beamer - also from a quick test of mine it doesn't work at all)
• cutwin: As demonstrated in Wrapfigure beamer style this package seems to be able to deliver on what wrapfig fails (in beamer). However it doesn't allow the automatic approach I would like, as I have to enter the parameters manually. Furthermore this has the disadvantage that the respective paragraph has to be contained in a cutout environment. Also I don't know how this one plays alongside lists...