jump79 revealed the answer in his/her post above
The mini smiley face is character 9786. Put an in front of it (without any spaces) and it shows up as the face character.
Alternatively, in Word, go to Insert - Symbol, find the symbol you want and insert it. Then, copy and paste from Word to your AB post.������I ♥ ☺  (Not!)
The space character I used to get wider spaces is the non-breaking space which is entered as nbsp and also needs an ampersand (&) character in front of it (no spaces).