After taking a look at Documentation Center article on DiscretizeRegion, I thought there was a easy solution. I thought it could be done like this:
DiscretizeRegion[Rectangle[{0, 0}, {2, 1}],
MaxCellMeasure -> 2,
MeshCellHighlight ->
{0 -> Directive[AbsolutePointSize[15], Red],
1 -> Directive[Thick, Black],
2 -> RGBColor[0, 0, 0, 0]}]

But as you can see it didn't work — it failed to highlight the vertex mesh cells. What does work is:
DiscretizeRegion[Rectangle[{0, 0}, {2, 1}],
MaxCellMeasure -> 2,
MeshCellShapeFunction -> {1 -> (Line[#] &), 2 -> (Null &)},
MeshCellHighlight ->
{0 -> Directive[AbsolutePointSize[10], Red],
1 -> Directive[Thick, Black]}]

I am troubled by this solution. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't say to me: "Now that you've found me, you see that I'm the obvious solution." In fact, it has more the feel of a work-around for a bug that causes 2 -> RGBColor[0,0,0,0] to be mishandled. I am also puzzled by the need for 1 -> (Line[#]&) in the righthand side of the MeshCellHighlight option, but here is what happens when it's removed.

I think I should mention that I ran into this strange behavior of DiscretizeRegion in V11.3. I would be interested to learn if it persists in V12.
Update
I can confirm that the bug described in the question has been fixed in v12 and the work-around given here is no longer needed.