This may be a sketchy solution, and I'd appreciate anybody pointing out whether this is a bad idea, since it's not a standard use of functions. I've had some success getting HTML out of a PHP function without building the return value as a string with the following:

function noStrings() { echo ''?> <div>[Whatever HTML you want]</div> <?php; }

The just 'call' the function:

noStrings();

And it will output:

<div>[Whatever HTML you want]</div>

Using this method, you can also define PHP variables within the function and echo them out inside the HTML.