You’ll need to use ng-transclude, add transclude: true in your directive options, and add ng-transclude to your template:
<div class="example" style="…" ng-transclude></div>`
This plunkr has an example on how to use ng-transclude with a template, to keep the original dom element.
http://plnkr.co/edit/efyAiTmcKjnhRZMTlNGf