re: Could Saban recruit, and win championships, anywhere in the SEC?

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No...I'm comparing their circumstances at the time of their arrival to their respective programs.

While Alabama and LSU had enjoyed past success before Saban arrived, their immediate situations were not entirely dissimilar to what Spurrier found when he first arrived at South Carolina and Florida.

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I respect the opinion, but disagree. Take LSU, for example: in the 80's LSU won several SEC championships and went to several major bowls- 2 Sugars and 1 Orange. Add to that the 87 season, LSU went to only the Gator, but at 10-1-1 that might have been their best season. Sure, the early 90's under Hallman were crap, but Dinardo had already turned it around. His teams might have gone to crappy bowls (Independence), but the 96 and 97 teams did actually tie for the SEC West (lost tiebreakers, missed out on Atlanta). One of those teams mauled Saban's MSU team, so he saw firsthand what LSU had available. The slump at the end of Dinardo's tenure was major mismanagement- the offense remained potent, but the defensive scheme (Lou Tepper) was criminally bad. A competent defensive scheme would almost certainly have led to that team continuing to challenge for the West title.
Notice, I said the flaw was "mismanagement". Look at Saban from a practical angle, and you see he's a perfect fix for that- he micro-manages everything. LSU went from a joke on defense (his specialty) to extremely sound. He eliminated all the "random" losses, so that a team actually had to BEAT LSU to win the game. That said, it's not like he significantly raised the talent level; LSU was already bringing in NFL talent (Kevin Faulk, Eddie Kennison, Brady James, Booger McFarland etc). He eliminated the mistakes from a team that was already capable of challenging for the SEC West.
I won't bother addressing Alabama, as Tide fans already know that program should be able to compete annually for the title.

Compare that to Spurrier's achievements; Florida may have shown some fight, but they were still a level below Tennessee, Georgia, and Auburn (and Fla St and Miami too) when it came to teams they faced. Like I said, zero SEC titles in their history. Spurrier coached there 12 seasons, won 6 SEC titles, won 9 or more games every year, played for 2 national titles and won one, finished ranked every season. This isn't "repairing the mismanagement", it's completely changing the historical standing of the program. Florida went from being outside the conference's elite, to the very top.
South Carolina- until recently, this was a program that was on the bottom level. Become bowl eligible and your coach would win Coach of the Year trophies. Challenge for a title? Yeah, right- maybe in baseball.
No titles yet, but 8 bowls in 9 seasons, won the East in 2010, and has followed that with 3 straight 11-2 seasons (and just weird luck that they haven't won again, as the past 3 seasons have all been better than the 2010 season). Again, he's completely flipped the program from what it was.

I'm not claiming Spurrier is better than Saban (or not), but he's clearly done more with less. Spurrier creates programs from nothing, while Saban restores programs to their peak.

I think Saban would do better than Spurrier at Tennessee, and likely win a national title or 2 (depending on how long he stayed). But I think Spurrier would far surpass him at, say, Kentucky. He'd build Kentucky to current South Carolina levels, while Saban would approach .500 and likely leave in frustration.