Thanks for your post, I have crated a small function to make it reusable for scripting.

function padding () {
CONTENT="${1}"; PADDING="${2}"; LENGTH="${3}"; TRG_EDGE="${4}";
case "${TRG_EDGE}" in
left) echo ${CONTENT} | sed -e :a -e 's/^.{1,'${LENGTH}'}$/&'${PADDING}'/;ta'; ;;
right) echo ${CONTENT} | sed -e :a -e 's/^.{1,'${LENGTH}'}$/'${PADDING}'&/;ta'; ;;
center) echo ${CONTENT} | sed -e :a -e 's/^.{1,'${LENGTH}'}$/'${PADDING}'&'${PADDING}'/;ta'
esac
return ${RET__DONE};
}

Usage: echo "IP Address: padding "${IP_ADDRESS}" "${PADDING}" ${LENGTH}webserver";
Hope you find it of any use.