The authors consider Ginzburg-Landau-type models for localized structures observed in the vicinity of subcritical bifurcations to cellular flows, where two metastable homogeneous states coexist in an interval range of the control parameter. A localized structure consists of a small region in the bifurcated state surrounded by the basic state. The authors show how non-variational effects, i.e. the absence of a free energy to minimize, can explain the stability of these structures, contrary to the case of droplets in first-order phase transitions.