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You could use the aliencontrol ROS package. This package contains a node that starts an external application.

For example, if you wanted to start, say, top in a roslaunch script, you would include the following node:

<node pkg="aliencontrol" type="aliencontrol" name="aliencontrol_top">
    <param name="cmd" value="top"/>
</node>

There are some benefits of using this package over creating a ROS package and putting bash scripts inside it:

1. Not only does the aliencontrol node launch your external script or application, but it also takes care of shutting down cleanly. This means that if you shut down ROS, the external application is automatically shut down.
2. You do not need to undergo the process of creating a bash script and fiddling with the input arguments.
3. You can start and stop the external application from ROS GUIs like node_manager_fkie.