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It is part of the suspense building as the story gets literally and metaphorically darker and both reprises the perillous journey through the mountans in the hobbit and foreshadows the encounter with Shelob in Cirith Ungol. They are beginning to face opponents that they may not be able to deal with. Aragorn and Glorfindel can drive off black riderrs aided by fire and water, Bombadil banishes the barrow wight but escaping from Wargs and the Watcher leaves them trapped in Moria.
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And that only increases further on. When the Fellowship breaks, Frodo finds less and less help than when he was in relatively close proximity to The Shire and Rivendell. Closer to the "safe" places, there are more people to help (Bombadil, Farmer Maggot, Glorfindel, The Fellowship), but as he gets farther away, and the Fellowship breaks, the people to step out and help Frodo along the way get fewer. The only person I can think of after the breaking of the Fellowship is Faramir (or if you want to include Gollum, because he did get them out of a sticky mess). However, as the journey progresses, it's only Sam and Frodo, they don't get help from anyone else.
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It is a large fantasy world. Of course there are strange creatures living deep below the earth.
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And of course I'm sure that the "critters" Gandalf refers to, weren't all "watchers in the water," but just looking at the words he selects, and then later in
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"Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he."
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Comparing them, I got this feeling that some of the "nameless things" could have been other "Watchers in the Water." And Perhaps it wasn't just one that attacked Frodo. Alas, we will never know.
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I wonder if the dwarves ever had an encounter with this creature (or this type of creature) when their realm existed there.
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One of the 13 dwarves (I forget which one I think it was Ori) was killed by the Watcher in the Water. However, Gandalf refers to where he fell as "far below the delvings of the dwarves" and the dwarves did not make the passages down there, so I doubt they came across the creatures Gandalf's talking about in The White Rider. However, they did encounter "The Watcher."