In my opinion A section element is basically an important sub div by this I mean, A section element is used to designate a notable division in your content.

One of the best ways I have found to think about if you should use a certain element in a certain place is:

Imagine you are using a screen reader like a blind person. They cannot see images or color, so the fact that you have a different background for each part of you content makes no difference to them.

But, If suddenly the screen reader starts reading out "new section" then that makes a more sense doesn't it?

So, in my opinion.

You should not replace your content or slideshow div with a section.

a section should be used inside of your content div.

Although,

This may be nit picking, but does having a content div not take the place of where an article element should be?

In my opinion A section element is basically an important sub div by this I mean, A section element is used to designate a notable division in your content.

One of the best ways I have found to think about if you should use a certain element in a certain place is:

Imagine you are using a screen reader like a blind person. They cannot see images or color, so the fact that you have a different background for each part of you content makes no difference to them.

But, If suddenly the screen reader starts reading out "new section" then that makes a more sense doesn't it?

So, in my opinion.

You should not replace your content or slideshow div with a section.

a section should be used inside of your content div.

Although,

This may be nit picking, but does having a content div not take the place of where an article element should be?

The <article> tag defines external content.
The external content could be a news-article from an external provider, or a text from a web log (blog), or a text from a forum, or any other content from an external source.

In reality if this was the case they would have called the tag <external>