I don't think the launcher does just maps... Techincally, you could make a "modpack" that does nothing but load a saved world. It just unzips what you put in a zip. IE, if you make a zip with:
\saves\MyGreatMap
inside it, including the directory, it would just unzip that file and throw night but that saved world into a fresh Minecraft build. Modstechnically are not required, I believe.