so i went looking for CAwed worlds to suit my needs and found one that fit, however im not sure there are spawners placed on it and i am not sure how to check, i know i can place them on lots but i want to place them outside of lots, is there a way to do it with the world having already been created or am i limited to just populating lots?

IF... the world creator did not paint everything as "unroutable", you can place a 10 x 10 lot (smaller if you have some mod to do it), set it as community, no visitors allowed (or whichever suits your needs), use testing cheats "moveobjects on" and place spawners that way.

Otherwise, you could ask the creator about the spawners, and ask them if you can have the CAW files. If that's not possible, you could open it yourself in CAW.
I think to make the spawners show in the world editor you'd need to mod them.

In a world I am doing now I placed quite a few 10x10s to place some things that would not work elsewhere.