When you say 'stay on' do you mean you want them to stay on after the first flash? If so I would recomend wireing the 555 as a monostable and connecting an inverter and thyristor to the output. You could have a switch on the tyristor if you want to turn the latching on or off (a standard on-off off-on latching spst should do). If not please explain.
One way is to wire the 555 as an astable, with threshold and trigger wired together. From their junction, connect the timing cap to ground and the timing resistor to output.
To make the output stay high, switch the th/tr junction to ground - to make it stay low, switch the junction to +ve rail.