From version 2.13.0 of Dart Code, emulators can be launched directly from within Visual Studio Code, but this feature relies on support from the Flutter tools which means it will only show emulators when using a very recent Flutter SDK. Flutter’s master channel already has this change, but it may take a little longer to filter through to the development and beta channels.
I tested this feature, and it worked very well on Flutter version 0.5.6-pre.61 (master channel).
