Since knob is part of ion-range's shadow DOM it is not easy to customize it.
You could do the following trick to place text "TEST" onto the knob via --knob-background property (Ionic 4):
template:
<ion-item>
<ion-range min="-200" max="200" color="secondary" class="rangeWithKnobText">
<ion-label slot="start">-200</ion-label>
<ion-label slot="end">200</ion-label>
</ion-range>
</ion-item>
scss:
.rangeWithKnobText {
--knob-background: url("data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' xmlns:xlink='http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink' width='100%' height='100%' viewBox='0 0 150 150' style='background-color:white'%3E%3Ctext style='font-size: 48px' fill='black' x='20' y='92'%3ETEST%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E") no-repeat;
--knob-size: 40px
}
demo:
https://stackblitz.com/edit/ionic-v4-angular-tabs-aycdyq
Basically you are leveraging css background property and inlining SVG (encoded) as background's url